forget the horrors
by QuietLittleVoices
Summary: He smells like sweat and incense, and tastes like clove cigarettes. (End!verse Destiel)


**A/N: **First time writing end!verse, and first time writing any sort of sex scene type thing, so please go easy on me and leave a review :) I also posted a playlist with the same name on 8tracks ( /quietlittlevoices/forget-the-horrors)

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He smells like sweat and incense, and tastes like clove cigarettes. You chase a memory with your tongue, of the taste of something _other_ – something distinctly Cas, that set him apart. You shut your eyes tight and dig your fingers into his hips and it's almost like you can feel it – feel him, who he used to be, before he became this shell of what he was.

He moans into your mouth as your fingers bruise his ribs and a bit of you breaks inside because it's _right there_ – he sounds like Cas, your Cas, underneath it, but there's something else there, now. It isn't him anymore, not really, but it feels like him, and that's all you need. So you shut out the sounds and the sights and you latch your mouth on to his neck, tracing his scars with your tongue. You remember him getting those scars, cutting himself shaving of all things when he'd first fallen. When no one knew that this is how bad everything would get.

You muffle a sob in the hollow of his throat and he pushes your shirt off your shoulders, flings it into the corner of the room. In turn you reach under his shirt and push it over his head, kissing up his chest. There are new scars there, now, too. Bullets and knives and finger nails dug too deep, memories of blood trailing against pale skin. By you, a faceless monster, a common enemy, it was all the same in the end. It all ended with another imperfection, another reminder that Cas was human now, another tenuous bond holding you together, ready to snap when the pressure got too much.

He pulls you back up to his face, and your lips crash together almost painfully, but you soon regain your rhythm as he pulls your t-shirt over your head. The first touch of skin on skin makes you gasp and open your eyes, green meeting blue, and his are broken in a different way then they were before. The light's gone out from behind them, his very essence changed. When he lost his grace, it wasn't just that; he lost himself, too, much more slowly. You don't recognize him anymore, so you shut your eyes and you pretend, breath him in and tell yourself that underneath it you can still smell _Cas_ – like ozone, like earth after rain, like that dumb fruity shampoo he used to make you buy.

But he doesn't; he smells like gunpowder and fire and your soap because it's the end of the world and you all share everything, anyway. And then you can't smell him anymore, and that's probably best, because he's flipping you onto your back and making his way down your chest to your belt buckle. He doesn't even feel like Cas anymore, not really. He was always thin, but he used to be lithe, deceptively muscular. Now he's almost skin and bones, shirts that used to fit hanging off his bony frame.

You can't look at him as he undoes your belt buckle, pulls your jeans down roughly, throws them away into the darkness of the room around you. When he comes back up, you feel the burn of denim against bare thigh, and you flip over again with a light push. He didn't use to give in so easy, it used to be an even give-and-take. You used to laugh and play and tease, but now it's hard to keep from crying when you look into his dead eyes.

Touch memory guides you down his chest, and you count his ribs under your mouth. You latch on to his hipbone because, despite everything, his skin still tastes the same, like sweat and salt. You undo his belt buckle but leave the leather strip – yours, but you don't mention it – in the loops as you push them down as far as your arms can reach while still pressing kisses and sucking marks in the ridge between his jutting bones. They're down to his knees when you bring your hands back up to hold him still against the bed and you push them the rest of the way down with your foot, leaving them at the base of the bed.

He isn't wearing underwear because 'it's too confining', and you've never understood why he thought that because denim wasn't always comfortable, but you're kinda grateful for it because if you had to remove another layer you might get too impatient. This is the part where he flips you over again and presses down and you need _more. _His mouth is open against yours, not even kisses anymore; you're just breathing each other in. You can feel his wolfish grin against your face as a moan escapes your lips and he finally moves to remove the last of your clothing so you're pressed skin-to-skin in all places possible.

Then he reaches over to the nightstand and pulls out a familiar tube, and this is the part where you forget all that's happened between you, all the lies and the betrayals and the changes. You forget that he isn't who he used to be as he reaches underneath you, because _this_ is the same. He still knows your body and you still know his, you can still play each other like well tuned instruments. You've both given up on the pretence of kissing entirely as he folds his head forwards and touches his forehead to your shoulder, and you can almost give yourself over to the feelings, the sensations, if it wasn't for how different this was from how it used to be. You used to look each other in the eyes the whole time, matching grins threatening to boil over into laughter, bathed in the glow of lamplight, but now you're shrouded in darkness and you can't remember the exact shade of blue that his eyes are.

Then he's inside you, and all around you, and you can't get away from the feeling of _other_ness that accompanies this, something you've never gotten used to even though you've done this countless times. You're both still and silent as he waits for you to adjust, holding your breath, but then he gasps against the skin of your collar bone and starts to move and you draw in a breath. He tips his head slightly to kiss you from shoulder to shoulder, open mouthed, messy kisses that aren't much more than licking, and you shiver for a thousand different reasons because he used to pause on your freckles but you don't think he even knows how many you have anymore.

It doesn't take long, it never does, and your worlds shatter apart together and he collapses on top of you. Suddenly he's your Cas again, how he used to be, as he pulls out and curls around you, tucking his head under your chin. For a few minutes, he smells like he used to, tastes like he used to, _feels_ like he used to, so you don't break the illusion by looking when you press a kiss into the top of his hair. And when you whisper, "I love you," it isn't for the Cas you know during the day, isn't for the Cas you see walking around camp, isn't for the Cas that joined you in bed not half an hour ago. It's for the Cas that cut himself shaving and laughed at the wrong times and found wonder in all things human. He knows that, and when he says it back, it's not for you, not for the you lying there in bed with your arms wrapped around him. It's for the you that showed him Star Trek and held him without talking while he cried through the night about falling and loosing this Grace.

And maybe you're both still in love with who you used to be, and maybe you know you're never getting back to that. But, somehow, in moments like this, you're okay with that, because for just a single moment you get to hold the best thing in the world in your arms. And that's more than you ever thought you'd get.


End file.
